Subject: Re: riddle of the day (year for me) 
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 17:07:39 EST

this comes up fairly often.

from the rec.puzzles faq (available on the web at
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/puzzles/faq/faq.html )

2.B.  ==> gry <==   [language/part2]
    What are the three common English words that end in -GRY?

    There are only two... "angry" and "hungry". The rec.puzzles
    archive lists a large collection of words that end in -GRY,
    but none of them could be considered even remotely common.

    This puzzle began to plague rec.puzzles and other newsgroups in late
    March 1996, when a new version appeared with embellishments such as
    "you use it every day, and if you've listened closely, I've already
    told you the answer."  There is evidence that all these versions
    originated in an old trick-question, spoken variant of the puzzle
    where the listener had to figure out that there were quotation marks
    and an ambiguous pronoun reference: the expression "only three words
    in 'the English language'", then leads to the answer "language" and
    not a word ending in -GRY at all.

    A person who doesn't know the trick and asks someone else to try the
    puzzle will almost certainly change the wording, accidentally making
    it insoluble, and in this case, one of these changed versions has
    apparently made it into circulation on radio phone-in shows as well
    as the Net.
    
    Either that, or the embellishments were added by a sadist who wanted
    to make people rack their brains for a nonexistent word.

    Recently, the word "nugry" was coined to provide an answer to this 
    puzzle. It was first used by Tom Maciukenas (tomm@dvorak.amd.com)
    and its current definition is:

    nugry (noo-gree) n.  1. A newcomer who fails to follow established rules 
    or procedures.  2. One who shows his inexperience by acting 
    inappropriately.  3. One who posts the -GRY puzzle to rec.puzzles, in
    violation of the FAQ.  --adj., Having the qualities of a nugry. 
    --nugrily, adv.,  pl. nusgry (news-gree)